He Has Promised Us Long Life
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“It is appointed unto man once,” one time, “to die.” People misquote that. They say it says a
time, but it didn’t say a time. It said “once,” one time. Ecclesiastes talks about a time frame and
work, and we’re going to see what that means. I want to get this established from the Bible. This
is another scripture that is sometimes quoted correctly but misapplied, or misunderstood. In
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, in the New Living translation, it says, “To every thing there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die,” and the list goes
on.
Some say, “Well see, it says right there ‘a time to die’.” It did, but don’t miss that first word:
season. He’s talking about a season. A season is not necessarily 3:00 in the afternoon on a
Tuesday. It’s a season.
Mark these verses in your Bible. You may need to help someone with this next week, and if you
marked them, or you took notes, you could sit down and go over it with them. There are millions
of people—Christians, good people who love God and are thoroughly saved—who don’t believe
what we’re talking about. They don’t believe this. And yet, it’s the Bible.
Job 5:26 says, “Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his
season.” When? It comes in his season.
Another translation says, “You will be like wheat that grows until harvest time. You’ll live to a
ripe old age.”
The Contemporary English Version says, “You’ll live a long life, and your body will be strong
until the day you die.” That sounds good, doesn’t it?
The Living Bible says, “You shall live a long, good life; like standing grain, you’ll not be
harvested until it’s time!” You’ll come to your grave at a ripe old age like a stack of hay in the
right season.
Did you know that there is a right time to harvest the grain, and there’s a time that is premature?
You don’t harvest the corn when the kernels haven’t even developed, when there are little,
premature, undeveloped ears. You want to wait until it’s fully developed and it goes through all
the cycles and is ripe. That’s where we get the phrase “ripe old age.” It’s biblical, and it’s
correct.
There is an appropriate season to die, but even that is not set in concrete. You understand, age 20
is not the right season, and age 50 is not the right season. When would be the approximate right
season? It is at 100 plus years, 120. That’s the end of the cycle of a human life, and that’s only
because of sin. We were never supposed to die at all.
There is a right season, so if that’s the case, then there is a wrong season.
Ecclesiastes 7:17 says, “Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou
die before thy time?”
